When Heroes Die

“While it is true that there is nowhere an Angel fears to tread, I find that there are many places they don’t bother to visit. A roof over the head is usually enough to avoid a proper smiting.”

―Dread Emperor Abominable, the Thrice-Struck

Out of my many out-of-body experiences, this was by far the strangest. I was asleep and I was aware of that.

I also felt like I was wrapped in a comfortable, warm blanket, sitting next to a fireplace during winter.

At the back of my not-mind, I could feel the changes being made to the shape of me. It was reassuring to find my faith reaffirmed. I had wanted some way to carry out my dreams. I had wanted some way to continue my goals. This wasn’t what I had been expecting, but it was in many ways better than I had hoped for.

I turned my attention back to the dream I was submerged in.

The first of my ghosts approached.

Lightning crackled. Five-year-old me whimpered in bed, before climbing out and scampering outside the room. She made her way to my parents’ room. The door creaked as she let herself in.

“Mom, I can’t sleep,” five-year-old me poked at my mother from the side of her bed. “The storm is scary. Can you please read to me?”

“Okay, Little Owl,” she replied after some time.

“Oof, you’ve grown so big.” Climbing out of bed, she reached down and picked five-year-old me up. My younger self squealed as she carried me to my room.

She put me down in my bed and tucked little Taylor in, pulled up a chair beside the bed and picked up the book on the bedside table. She licked her index finger, pulled at the rose-scented bookmark within it, and opened the book to the appropriate page.

“Bilbo had escaped the goblins, but he did not know where he was. He had lost hood, cloak, food, pony, his buttons and his friends. He-”

The dream faded.

I was being made into a living story. I had expected to be turned back into a person. It’s what had made the most sense to me. Instead, my other story was being… personified. The end result was something alien. A living, breathing redemption story made entirely out of Light, but still very much a person. Nothing about me had been left out or abandoned. It would defeat the purpose. A redemption story had to include the bad for the good to be a redemption. That didn’t make it less of an odd flavour of existence that I would have to acclimatize to.

I knew that I was still able to fall. A redemption story didn’t mean anything if the possibility of falling wasn’t there. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I fell, but I could do it if I was struck by a sudden onset of insanity. It didn’t concern me much. I had no intention of falling at all.

My second ghost approached.

The funeral was grim.

Dad was listless as we left. It was as if when mom died, he followed her into the grave. The silence was stifling as dad drove home. Younger me sat beside him and wondered if it was her fault. She didn’t think it was, but she couldn’t help herself from asking.

She found it difficult to talk now. Difficult to express joy in the way that she used to.

They arrived home and her dad cooked them a meal. There was no life to his movements as he worked. It was all mechanical, formulaic. He was like a computer program carrying out a script. Father and daughter ate the casserole together. Only the scraping of cutlery could be heard.

“Good night, Taylor.”

“Good night, dad.”

The second dream faded.

Each ghost was a part of me. A different person that I had been before arriving in Calernia. They were small shavings of my life, glimpses into my past.

The final shape of my new existence wasn’t all sunshine and roses. The changes hadn’t finished yet, but I had undergone enough of them that I could see what was being done to me. The amount of Light I wielded depended on the strength of my redemption story. I couldn’t be slain because I was a story and not a person. Well, my body could be dispersed, but it would reform.

It was hard for me to evaluate how much Light I would have at my disposal without a good point of comparison. This operation didn’t count. It was taking a significant amount of Light to modify me. So much that it couldn’t be quantified from up close. I wouldn’t have access to nearly that much of it. It did mean that for the duration of the miracle, I was able to experience what it would be like to hold the power of an Angel within me.

It was terrifying. I never wanted to be responsible for this much power. I knew that I liked power more than most. That I needed it to feel in control. There wasn’t any part of me that wanted to be in a position where smiting countries became something I could do in my sleep.

I was both fortunate and unfortunate that I would not be having that problem.

In more ways than one, I would be a lot weaker than I was before. I couldn’t do as much at once, and I was more limited in what I could do. The Light was nowhere near as versatile as living life as a demon.

It didn’t mean that I was weak.

Most priests had an upper limit to how much Light they could use at once before burning themselves out as a husk. My body was constructed from Light, although it looked like flesh and bone. I could use as much Light as my Gods made available to me without hurting myself as a result.

Calling upon miracles would tire me, but it did little else.

In theory, I could far surpass what I could do before in terms of raw power… if my story ever became strong enough. It was a very direct way to encourage me to keep walking the same road.

I didn’t need the extra encouragement. It wasn’t why I had chosen to follow my Gods.

The third of my ghosts approached.

Younger me stood in a line to use the pay phone. Her clothes were dirty, covered in mud, but her face sported a grin. She hopped from foot to foot with an energetic enthusiasm that she didn’t even realize that she had.

The line moved forward.

It was eventually her turn. She paid, dialled the number, and fidgeted with her curly black hair as she waited for someone on the other side to pick it up. Finally, the call went through.

“Emma!” she exclaimed. Her voice was loud. It needed to be to ensure that Emma heard her over the din.

“Taylor,” Emma replied.

“Okay I gotta talk fast because I only have two minutes and I need my other fifty-”

The third dream faded.

It was me a few days before Emma had cut me out of her life. I had started to recover and was almost a person again.

Relinquishing my stories hadn’t been entirely negative. There were also new advantages.

I was a story come to life. While I could no longer peak behind the curtain and see which way other stories would travel, I could view the lay of my own story's past as if it was written on a page. I couldn't manipulate my past at all, but I could read it.

It meant that I would not need to worry about forgetting where I came from any more.

It was also a much more useful ability than I would have thought. I hadn’t given nearly as much importance to the creation of the stone in Aisne as Fate appeared to. It was the point of my story where most of my power came from.

Knowing as much helped me to plan for the future.

Something else I had struggled with was subtlety when working on a large scale. I hadn’t been able to manipulate emotions on an individual level during the confrontation in the swamp without outside assistance. It was unlikely I would be faced by a situation like that any time soon, but… if I was, I was much better suited to dealing with it now.

The Light was specialized. It was good for some tasks. It would take me time to learn how to use it without assistance, but it was excellent at doing those tasks. I no longer had a general purpose tool. There were many parts of that which I would regret.

Having access to the Light was not one of them. It felt like a quiet assurance of my faith. A promise that I was never alone.

I turned my attention towards the Tumult. It had finished eating and fallen asleep in the time since its imprisonment. I wasn’t even sure if it had responded to my message on the rock. I hoped as much, but without checking I couldn’t be sure.

Was I far enough away from it?

The Tumult was a villain and while the Light felt gentle to me - it was impossible for it to feel otherwise now - I knew that it would be unpleasant for the Horned Lord. I was doing my best to make its stay comfortable. I did not want to wake it up.

That was my main disappointment with my change in circumstances. It made it challenging for me to negotiate with villains. My mere presence would be unnerving for them. I hadn’t met any that could be guided to a higher purpose, but that didn’t mean that none existed. I was not happy that an already challenging task had been made even more insurmountable.

It was not my only new difficulty. I couldn’t use magic any more. I hadn’t tried to, but I knew that I just couldn’t. That was the other loss my twin had been hinting towards.

While I could still read and learn the theory, the gift had been burned out of me. It wasn’t done out of malice or an attempt to deny me of magic. It was just that in order to be able to channel the Light, I couldn’t be able to use the gift. The two powers were incompatible with each other. It didn’t make it any less disappointing to me, but I’d already made my choice, and I was happy to have the Light. Maybe there were heroes with Graces that allowed them to overcome that natural limitation… but I wasn’t one of them.

It stung, but I was okay with it.

That might have been different if I had actually had time to become used to having magic.

But I hadn’t, and so I couldn’t properly appreciate what it was that I had lost.

It felt trivial compared to what I had given up intentionally.

I had known there would be a cost to my decision when I had made it. The choice was one where I had known that if my faith was misplaced, it would kill me in the making of it. I trusted that my Gods wouldn’t do that to me, and they hadn’t.

The fourth spectre approached, but I didn’t pay much attention to what the vision showed. It was me after I had been broken down by Emma. These memories had not faded yet. While they had scarred over, I still didn’t like dwelling on them. The first three visions had started to slip from my mind. I was glad to have those remnants refreshed. I wasn’t sure how my Gods had found them again, but it was like a part of my past had been returned.

The fifth followed - it was my time as Skitter - and then came the sixth. Weaver. Those were also memories that were vivid in my mind. There was no need for me to think about them.

Someone was looking in.

Without moving even a speck of Light, I turned my attention to the voyeur. The first feature that I took note of were the golden eyes. I knew that face. It was one that I had seen before, albeit a few years older than the person I had seen in the vision of Zain. Going by looks, I’d guess she was maybe twelve to thirteen.

Why was Akua Sahelian looking at me?

I wasn’t even sure she had been a real person. I had thought she was just a hypothetical what if conjured up by my mind. It seemed that she wasn’t someone I had made up after all. It made sense. The dream involving Catherine was also false, but she was a real person. It just meant that I had seen an alternate version of Akua. Was she looking for the ghost of her cradle-sister?

No, I doubted she would care enough.

Everything I had glimpsed about Praesi culture from that vision indicated otherwise. I felt her try to bind me. I should have felt disgusted - and a part of me did - but a larger part of me felt amused. The Akua I had memories of had been smart. She should have known better than trying to bind something like me. Even if she ignored the fact that my body was in the process of being reforged by something equivalent to an Angel, Light in the much more limited quantity that I had at my disposal was anathema to sorcery. I could break what she was doing with only a thought.

Could I take advantage of this?

This seemed like a story. A story of an overly ambitious Praesi sorcerer reaching beyond their remit. I could go along with this and pretend her bindings held any power over me, then use it as an opportunity to try to drag her kicking and screaming off the road to hell. I wasn’t sure how feasible the idea was. What I did know what that if I acted before she pulled me through, she would certainly have a failsafe to protect herself.

What would Zain have thought of this?

A part of Zain would have been proud of Akua, even if she also felt betrayed. She would have been proud that Akua had been strong enough to murder her. Everything about Praesi culture made me feel sick.

I gave a small prayer within the confines of my mind, then began to change the intensity of my Light so that it wouldn’t erode Akua’s spell. I needed to do that merely to buy enough time to think on the matter. If her bindings broke while she was attempting to lay them, it would alert her to the mistake she was making.

It was novel how easy Light was to work with. I only had to think of what it was that I wanted, and my Gods would help with the parts that I didn’t understand.

I still wanted to learn how to manipulate the Light myself.

There was a difference between being guided by my Gods when times were hard and being fully dependent on them. I was willing to accept the former, but not the latter.

I remained as still as I could. It was important to not let on that I had caught wind of what she was doing while I thought this through.

What were the risks?

Well, I’d end up somewhere in Praes. If anyone could kill me, it would be somewhere in Praes, but usually the story involved in summoning something like me relied on banishing the entity and not killing it.

What I was considering doing reminded me of what the Choir of Compassion had done to prevent me from killing myself when I had first looked in.

Her first set of bindings were about to settle on me. No matter, I still had time to think this over before I would be pulled through. That was when I saw them break. It came as a surprise. It took effort not to react.

Did I break them anyway?

No, that made no sense.

It took me a moment to notice the other person watching me.

Oh, Yvette.

The thought was fond, but also exasperated.

She also should have known better. She should have known that Akua couldn’t bind me, although I’d give her more of a pass. The education I was trying to give her could not measure up to what Akua Sahelian was receiving.

I didn’t like how uneducated I was.

I’d take time to correct that after I returned to the Principate.

Akua tried again.

What concerned me is I didn’t know how she found me in the first place. I could see her trying to bind a demon. Zain had been brought up with the idea that war crimes were a matter of faith, I could only imagine how much worse it must have been for Akua. What I didn’t understand was someone from Wolof peering into the heavens - because the heavens very much were where I was situated.

What had even possessed her to try?

I ignored the vision of the seventh ghost - of the time spent fighting Scion - only to be confronted with one more vision. The vision of my arrival.

Darkness.

No light, no sound, nothing.

An empty void stretching on to eternity.

With nothing to observe, nothing to contrast against, my mind had numbed.

I… drifted, bereft of purpose.

I drifted, lost in dreams.

Then a sound, a voice.

It reached out to me.

It called.

I followed.

It was my lone anchor in the abyss.

I arrived, only to feel chains try to tie themselves to me. It only confused me at first. I had been so lost - so estranged from myself - that I couldn’t even muster the will to fight.

I could hear people fighting. It was distant, as if I was listening to a conversation across an open lake.

Who was I?

Taylor. I was Taylor.

My mind came back to me. It was slow. It was gradual.

The scene resolved. Two people fighting on a rocky knoll. One wore a metal plate. It looked like something out of a renaissance-faire. The other wore blue robes. Capes. They had to be capes. The one in robes kept throwing lances of shadows at the other.

Someone was trying to chain me.

The robed man darted behind me. Why was I surrounded by blood painted on the ground?

“At long last, my scheme has finally borne fruit! Demon, I command-”

Not again. Never again.

The thought was angry, vicious.

I felt something within me lash out.

The chains tightened.

I faded from consciousness.

The vision came to an end. In the interim, it seemed that my daughter and Akua had sparred for some time before Akua eventually achieved supremacy. I felt myself being tugged in her direction.

Was this what I wanted?

Despite the good that I could theoretically do, I didn’t think it was. It was an opportunity for me to attempt to redeem a sorcerer in Praes, but it felt like I would be abandoning my friends and family in the process.

My transformation ended, and the staggering amount of Light withdrew.

Then Yvette made one more desperate attempt to sever Akua’s spell.

I felt Yvette’s clumsy attempt to bind me.

It was just as ineffective as Akua’s far more sophisticated ritual was.

I felt like I was watching two intelligent teenagers make stupid decisions because they didn’t think things through all the way. It was nostalgic.

Then I heard a sound. No, I heard a Call.

It wasn’t conveyed in words so much as impressions.

The impression of an empty home. A hearth with no wood, empty draws, a bed with no covers. The windows had no curtains and dust covered the floors. There was a cry. Tear-drops fell, but nobody was there to comfort her. I felt a pang of guilt.

Yvette was worried about her mother being stolen away from her again.

She was asking me to come home.

An attempt to redeem Akua would not work.

Not because it couldn’t work, but because I was unwilling to pay the price.

Even if I told Yvette what I was doing, she would feel like it was a betrayal, and I couldn’t disagree with that. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t abandon my new friends and family. That included leaving them temporarily to try and redeem someone else.

I wasn’t sure if it was a mistake to leave Akua Sahelian alone.

But if I had to choose between comforting my daughter and helping someone I had only seen before in dreams… I knew which choice I was going to make this time.

I was done with making choices that hurt but were arguably pragmatic, just because they might be easier in the long run.

So I reached out and answered the Call.

The spell didn’t fit me exactly. I slotted myself into it. The binding was evidently enforced by her Grace. There was no other way for it to hold in contact with the Light now that I had stopped stifling myself.

It wasn’t a well-designed spell. It looked like she was trying to tie up a donkey with a piece of string. A work of desperation, not a masterpiece. I didn’t think it could actually compel me to do anything at all, other than appear in her presence. I could have done that without being bound, but I would wait before I disillusioned her. She was likely distraught and needed some form of reassurance.

I understood why my daughter had done it, and it didn’t upset me. She knew that with one binding in place, another could not be enforced. It did frustrate me that she hadn’t stopped to think about the feasibility of binding me in the first place, but the intention was still good.

Actually, maybe I was being too judgemental. She knew what my nature was like before she made the attempt, and all of her preconceptions were built around that. I was not willing to extend the same leniency to Akua. She was digging around in the heavens for who knows what reason, she should have known that she didn’t have any bindings that could hold anything living here if it wanted them gone.

And I was okay with being bound to Yvette. It was a decision that I had already made on my own.

This was just something symbolic being made literal instead.

I felt Yvette’s binding settle onto me.

I reappeared next to the monolith and felt something slam into my stomach like Roland’s attempt at a curry.

“Ma you’re safe you’re safe I’m so sorry I almost lost you I wasn’t good enough and somebody was trying to steal you if-”

“It’s fine, Yvie. I’m fine.”

I would leave pointing out her mistakes for later.

She looked up. Her emerald eyes narrowed.

“What have you done to yourself you’re different now just think what you’ve done to my research oh oh oh this is going to make everything more complicated you know I’ve been trying to figure out how to shape the world how do you think I’ll do that without being able to reference you.”

Well, the concern did not last long.

“Why don’t you tell me about your new Name first?” I asked, amused.

Her cheeks reddened. She tilted her head to her right and mumbled something into the green of her collar.

“What was that, I didn’t hear it?”

“I said I’m the Bumbling Hierophant it’s embarrassing even my Name agrees that I always mess up where does the Name Hierophant come from anyway it's not one I’ve ever heard of before.”

So it begins.

“It’s a word from my old world. We’re going to have to talk to Laurence. Come on.”

“You’re certain?” Laurence asked from beside me at the edge of the fountain. There was a lip around the outside of it that both of us sat on. It was uncanny seeing water flowing from something that had been left to gather dust for millennia.

Her voice was measured, but I could tell that she was concerned.

“I am. We need to act fast on this.”

“Which stories cut deepest?” she continued to sharpen her blade while we talked.

The noises grated at my ears.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “There were lots of stories. I think I was better schooled in my world’s stories than many, but I still only knew a handful.”

“And from those?”

I took a moment to consider the stories that I knew.

From fantasy like the Lord of the Rings, to the classics like a Tale of Two Cities, to religious texts like the Bible. There were a lot of written stories on Earth Bet, and that was only the tip of the dragon’s snout. Then there was also history. From Artists like Michaelangelo, to inventors like Leonardo, to Conquerors like Alexander the Great, to atrocities like the Second World War.

Mythology was the most concerning. Myths like Prometheus, Fimbulwinter, Apep, Kronos, Arachne or even Loki were all stories from Earth Bet. It was a little reassuring that they weren’t exactly easy roles to step into, but that didn’t stop them from existing. I knew nowhere near enough about Earth’s different mythologies to grasp the full scope of the changes that introducing these stories would lead to.

… So long as nobody stepped into one of them, I didn’t need to worry about too much going wrong at once.

Video games were another concern, but I didn’t know nearly enough about them to even begin speculating on what stories would come from them.

It was complicated by the presence of Earth Bet’s modern history as well.

My story was likely one of the stronger stories, but it was not the only story. The Endbringers had been terrifying, although I was less concerned about them. Calernia had plenty of monster slaying stories. The Ranger could do some good for once. I was more worried about the subtle stories.

“There was someone called Contessa who always won. I don’t know enough about her history to guide someone into her Role, but we don’t want someone with that Role as a villain.”

Unfortunately, I could not pick up the roles of any of my world’s stories now. I was limited to guiding them from the outside at best. Calernia’s stories were available to me, or any completely original stories that I walked into on my own. I’d go as far as playing mother to whoever inherited Contessa’s Role to make sure that they weren’t a villain if it proved to be necessary.

The thought of someone like that as a villain terrified me.

“Other heroes need to know about this.”

“I know. I’m taking it to both Cordelia, and the House of Light.”

“Those squabbling children?”

“It’s the best way for news to spread.”

I’d decided that the church was my home. It was best to put my own house in order before I started to mend anything else. That didn’t mean I was abandoning the ground I had made with Cordelia Hasenbach. If anything, I expected the two of us might see a lot more of each other in future, just for different reasons.

There were many things that I felt I was not the right person to lead, but my own faith was not one of them. Even if I did not have the right body of knowledge to do it at present, I’d put in the work until I could step into the position I wanted to take. I’d decided that I was a priestess, and one day I’d be the head of my faith if my Gods willed it.

When we arrived back in the Principate, I’d catch up with Cordelia, then learn whatever I needed to know to best fit the position I wanted.

Somehow, I suspected that the plans I was likely to settle on would make a lot of people unhappy. It was too bad for the Principate that I had made up my mind about what it was that I wanted to do.

“They’re good intentioned but ineffective.”

“Then I’ll organize them and make them effective.”

“You should start in Levant then,” Laurence mused.

“The Lanterns?”

“They also know better than to try solving every problem with words.”

I knew what she meant. Priests in both the Proceran and Callowan denominations swore off violence. I was not willing to do so, but it was not a requirement for the faithful. The Warrior Priests of Levant were more than willing to wield the Light in combat in service of our Gods.

“I fit in better with the Proceran clergy.”

Just because I was willing to commit acts of violence didn’t mean I was keen on the idea of hunting monsters in the forest. It might serve to prevent attacks on population centres, but it didn’t improve life within those places so much as it prevented life from becoming worse. I wasn’t an exact match for any existing variation of the faith. Fortunately, I didn’t have to be.

“What about your other changes?”

I reached into our bags and pulled out a knife, then cut my arm.

Fake blood welled out for a moment, before Light returned it to wholeness only a heartbeat later.

“I’m not physically human. I don’t need to eat, or drink, or breathe, or sleep, although I am choosing to do all of that.”

“Kid, will we need to eat Ratling?” Laurence barked.

I winced.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I’m limited to what can be done with the Light. Buildings can be done, but they will be temporary.”

“And I was looking forward to not dining like an orc,” Laurence complained.

I couldn’t exactly blame her.

“There is a way I could make food for us, but…”

Laurence stopped sharpening her blade and looked at me.

“I have to use one of my Graces to do it.”

I could use Persevere to help with miracles that the Light was not usually used for, however there were still far more limits than before. I wouldn’t be able to perform necromancy, or summon shadows, anything that fell under the banner of Evil really. That didn’t upset me. I hadn’t been planning on leaning into Evil abilities anyhow. Creating permanent food was not too far diverged from what the Light was usually used for. It still felt like a waste.

I could still - in theory - do large civics projects. In practice, I would need to plan out projects that were massive in scale before it was worth the investment. My immediate goal was handling the fallout of introducing new stories.

It was far more pressing.

That didn’t make the loss sting any less, but… it was for a good cause. I had known what I was giving up when I made the choice. While the Light was less versatile, it was the best at what it did.

It was undeniable that my bargaining position with Cordelia had weakened. I no longer had economic leverage over whichever country I walked into. I wasn’t sure if that meant she would no longer have any interest in me, but I believed that she wouldn’t just cast me aside. Not because I believed in her being a good person, but because I had faith in my Gods.

It did mean that our relationship would become much more even in the future. She would feel much less pressured to listen to what I had to say.

But…

It was fine.

My Gods wanted me to succeed. There was at least one story on Earth Bet that ended in Utopia, and I could think of half a dozen more than that. Most of them were religious, but that was good enough for me. I was religious as well. It would just take adapting them to my own beliefs. Once I was done mitigating the fallout and making changes to the church, I would find whichever Utopian story best suited my goals and guide Calernia along it.

“Best not to,” the wrinkles on her face contracted as she squinted at me. “Trust your choosing.”

“What?”

It sounded almost like a reprimand.

“This trial is a test of faith. You will come out stronger for passing it.”

I felt as if the test of faith was already over. I didn’t bother to correct Laurence.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to try healing you?”

There were more than enough stories on Earth that Laurence should be able to step into, even if I couldn’t.

“Don’t cut yourself for my sake, kid. You said it yourself. You’re stuck with the old stories.”

“But think of-”

“Don’t weaken what you have just to make my passing easier.” Laurence cut me off.

“It will do the opposite.”

I felt like if anything should be a part of my story, this should. Even my new biology didn’t disagree with me.

“It’s my choice, kid.”

Fine.

It frustrated me that she wouldn’t allow me to try and heal her. I understood her rationale from the perspective of the stories that she knew, but it didn’t mean I agreed. She believed that my story was a continuation of the ending of hers. That by bringing back hers, I made my own weaker.

I’d respect her choice, even if I felt it was the wrong one.

“I need a moment by myself. Do either of you mind?”

“Don’t wander too far,” Laurence warned.

“I’m coming with you I don’t care if you want time alone maybe someone will steal you again also I want to go over what’s changed about you I’m not sure that I can learn from you any more, but I want to be sure,” she bristled as she talked. Her hands were balled into fists, and she glared as if she dared me to disagree with her.

Dressed as she was in her green tunic and leggings, she reminded me of a baby orc.

“I won’t go anywhere, Yvie.”

“Don’t care!”

“I promise.”

She pouted for a few moments. I smiled back, amused.

“Fine, but I’ll summon you back if you’re not here within an hour,” she relented, folding her arms as she glared.

Brat.

She sounded as if she was doing me some great favour in the process.

I walked off between more of the abandoned streets of the Titan’s city and headed back towards the section scorched by Triumphant. I went far. Miles away from anyone else. It took a while before I found a sheltered building.

I took a moment to… reduce my presence. It was a shifting of perspective - a lessening of the light that I was. I was still there, but people would pay less attention to me.

Merciful Gods, I pray to you that this Horned Lord remains asleep.

I felt a sense of reassurance from my family, but this was a decision I was following through with regardless. The longer the Horned Lord remained contained, the more damage was done everywhere else. It being absent was such a large upset to the existing ecosystem that I couldn’t keep it on me for any length of time at all. This was a risk that I needed to take.

The first two of my ghosts vanished as I prayed, and a Giant tailless slumbering Ratling appeared nestled inside the shelter.

The Horned Lord remained asleep.

I breathed out a long sigh when I saw that its dream had not changed.

Good. I don’t need to worry about having to kill it because it changed its goals.

I hadn’t truly been worried about it. The Horned Lord was thousands of years old. Any goals that it had were set in stone. That didn’t remove the small voice of caution whispering at the back of my mind.

I started to sneak away.

The Horned Lord didn’t wake up.

I’d look over the rock once we were somewhere safer. I was in the fortunate position that I was confident I could come back and continue negotiations alone at a later date. It would have been much more convenient if I could just sit around and resolve this permanently in a single sitting, but that was unfortunately not on the table.

Easy solutions to problems didn’t exist, as much as I wished they did.

It was frustrating not being able to resolve this. I felt like I had been giving an unknown quantity of larger issues that made solving this one concern less critical. It wasn’t time-sensitive, the others were.

We had notes on the Ratling’s curse.

That was enough to research a permanent solution from outside the Chain of Hunger.

Diplomacy with the Horned Lord would have been ideal, and I wasn’t willing to just give up on it, but I needed to prioritize.

It was time for us to begin our journey home.

I had stories that I needed to pre-empt, a house that I wanted to learn more about, then one day to put into order.

The rest of the world could come afterwards.